The Abbott government seems uninterested in real reform such as construction productivity. Rather, scoring a few political points by establishing a Royal Commission takes precedence. Prior to Abbott, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) had been working on streamlining and improving the national licensing of building activity, building related occupations and standards since 2009. The Abbott government’s actions since include sending most of the key areas to do with lifting

Construction procurement these days is more process driven than transaction focused. It is the sum of the parts of a client’s brief, multiple designer and consultant inputs, mixed priorities and in the end a tender which then becomes the beginning of a new chain of sub-contractor and supplier bid shopping to drive lowest cost and maximise residual contractor margin. Few of these endeavours are focused on ensuring that clients get

A leading national Quantity Surveyor recently published a report that proposed a crane index as a measure of industry confidence in the face of the current construction rebound. It was proposed that this might be an international innovation. Cranes may provide some indicators for governments, the industry and the public about how the economy is faring. One assumes the public would believe that many cranes on the horizon are a